• Fast Company, New York Times, Friday, October 8, 2010 8:56 AM

Austin Carr reports that Converse is building a studio in Brooklyn called Converse Rubber Tracks that will give bands free recording time in exchange for future promotions. The artists retain full rights to their music; Converse just hopes some of them will take off and it will bask in the glow of good will it demonstrated when times were tough.

"Think of a cul-de-sac with four garages, and in those garages are four bands," Ceoff Cottrill, Converse CMO, tells Ben Sesario, who broke the story yesterday in the New York Times. "On the street are all the big brands of the world -- Coke, Apple, the car companies -- standing there waiting for the garage door to open and the cool band to step out so they can tell them they're going to make them famous. But I would venture to say that inside those garages those kids are already wearing our shoes." And dancing in the aisles, too, no doubt,

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